India’s pilots are raising concerns about the nation’s air safety guidelines in the wake of the Air India Express crash last weekend, saying the government needs to address issues like scheduling, airport modernization and what they consider ill-advised incentives to carry out “soft” landings on short airstrips.

While Air India has said both the captain and co-pilot of Flight IX-812 were well-rested, some aviators are concerned the current scheduling rules are too lax.

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In 2007, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation – India’s aviation regulator – tightened the rest rules to ensure pilots had more time off between lengthy or tiring assignments, like roundtrip international flights.

But then, the next year, the DGCA rolled back those rules. Two Indian pilots who spoke to India Real Time on condition of anonymity said this was done for commercial reasons: heavy demand for pilots in the growing aviation sector meant airlines couldn’t afford to give pilots as much rest, they said.

“We don’t have the best rest possible,” one of the two pilots said. “There needs to be a scientific research process to determine how much rest we should be getting.”

Pradeep Deshpande, a pilot and spokesman for the Indian Pilots Guild, a union representing about 350 Air India pilots, said the group plans to push regulators to revise the so-called “Flight and Duty Time Limitations” to avoid certain scenarios where pilots can end up jet-lagged.

One example: when a pilot flies a round-trip international flight at night, arrives back home in India the next morning, then has to fly the same route the day after that.

The DGCA’s current director general has already promised to evaluate the mandatory rest rules, Mr. Deshpande said. New rules to determine the rest pilots need should count activities such as layovers and simulation training as on-duty time, he said.

One of the Indian aviators also noted that there is pressure on pilots – from within their companies and from the DGCA – to do more “soft landings,” in which the aircraft land smoothly on the tarmac and travels more slowly across the runway after landing. Such landings, while more comfortable for passengers, are more dangerous on hilltop runways with limited spillover areas, like the “table top” runway at Mangalore, the pilot said.

So-called “hard landings,” while more jarring for passengers, can be safer because there is more friction that helps the plane stop faster. There’s no evidence thus far to suggest the pilot in Saturday’s crash was attempting a soft landing. He may have just approached the runway too quickly and landed too far beyond a safe touch-down point or there could have been another reason for the crash.

Representatives of the DGCA and the Civil Aviation Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

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